Welcome back to the home of Paranormal & Dauntless Romance. Wow. Year 10. A whole decade. I’m astounded.
Today is Thursday and that means it’s time to start flashing, like we have for 10 whole years. It’s amazing we’ve gone this long! This is Week 528 of #ThursThreads, the challenge that ties tales together. Want to keep up each week? Check out the #ThursThreads #flashfiction group on Facebook and the Group on MeWe.
Need the rules? Read on.
Here’s how it works:
- The prompt is a line from the previous week’s winning tale.
- The prompt can appear ANYWHERE in your story and is included in your word count.
- The prompt must be used as is. It can be split, but no intervening words can be inserted or tenses changed.
Rules to the Game:
- This is a Flash Fiction challenge, which means your story must be a minimum of 100 words, maximum of 250.
- The story must be new writing, not a snippet from something published elsewhere with the prompt added.
- Incorporate the prompt anywhere into your story (included in your word count).
- Post your story in the comments section of this post
- Include your word count in the post (or be excluded from judging)
- Include your Twitter handle or email in the post (so we don’t have to look for you)
- The challenge is open 7 AM to 8 PM Mountain Time
- The winner will be announced on Friday, depending on how early the judge gets up.
How it benefits you:
- You get a nifty cool badge to display on your blog or site (because we’re all about promotion – you know you are!)
- You get instant recognition of your writing prowess on this blog!
- Your writing colleagues shall announce and proclaim your greatness on Facebook, Twitter, MeWe, and Google Plus, etc.
Our Judge for Week 528:
Computer geek, bass player, historical reenactor, and flash fiction writer, Mary Decker.
And now your #ThursThreads Challenge, tying tales together.
The Prompt:
“Maybe I was falling for her.”
All stories written herein are the property (both intellectual and physical) of the authors. Comments do not represent the views of the host and the host reserves the right to remove any content. Now, away with you, Flash Fiction Fanatics, and show us your #ThursThreads. Good luck!
“Your wing— what is wrong with it?”
I unfurl my wings so that I can see them, and even knowing exactly what I’m going to see doesn’t brace me for the mottled appearance. Where pristine white feathers had been, hints of gray and black have begun, and I can feel the fire burning deeper toward the muscles that control them.
“I need to pack what I can take with me,” is what I say instead. It’s easier than to say that I’m transitioning… falling. Maybe I was falling for her, but most likely I was falling for me. I could have denied her, could have done anything except put what she needed above my duty. Instead, I gave in to the need she kindled in my flesh.
“You’re falling.”
I turn away before I can see the tears in my best friend’s eyes. “Are you falling to Earth or deeper?”
Given what I’ve done, the work the other angels will have ahead of them… “Definitely deeper. There’s a chance of a Nephilim.”
His curse booms off my chamber walls and cracks the plaster. “I’ll help you fly down. I don’t think you can manage it, not with as far as the hellfire has eaten your wings.”
“You’ll be punished. They might make you fall.”
He reaches out and hesitantly runs a finger over an unblemished feather. “You’re my best friend. I can’t let you fall alone.”
236 words
Twitter: @miya_kressin
Too Close in The Night
Some calls you shouldn’t answer. Just let the damn phone ring. Maybe you have to be in a certain mood. Maybe the night’s too dark, the shadows are dancing strangely, the offshore fog is coming in, too fast or too slow, and maybe you should have another drink.
Or finish the bottle.
But I had answered.
I could hear the breathing.
The caller wasn’t talking.
I could have hung up.
Should have.
Instead, I said, ”You got something to say? Better make it quick.”
Nothing.
“Okay, I’ve got no time for any silence but my own…”
And then, “It’s me…Daria…”
I hung on. There was only one Daria in my world. Time jumped backward off the cliff of memory. Seven years earlier. My second case as a Private Operative. Hired by her husband, Howard Glade, to see if she was playing the field. Turned out, no she wasn’t. Not that I could tell.
I was like a second skin to her, those three weeks I tailed her.
Maybe I was falling for her.
I was certainly fascinated.
Didn’t want it to end.
Then I stepped in it.
Those deep dark pools that were her eyes.
She approached me at a corner of the busiest of streets. “Who are you? Are you a danger to me?”
“No,” I answered, “Quite the reverse.”
Our tryst lasted two weeks and then I bailed.
Stupidly.
And now, “He says he’ll kill me. Howard.”
I could feel night suffocating me.
250 Words
@billmelaterplea
I’d always thought Sharron was beautiful, inside and out, kind, sweet and always willing to help others. Yet she ended up with a knife in her hand and a bloodied dead body at her feet. I was suppose to arrest her wasn’t I? Maybe I was falling for her? No I had to remain impartial.
“What happened Sharron?” I asked.
She grabbed a knife from her counter after he attacked her. The story sounded plausible; but there were tell-tale indications that any cop could see, it hadn’t happened that way.
I turned my back and I spoke into my radio. I’d barely got two words out when I felt the blade slice through my chest. I tried to get out the words “Officer down!” out but it came out garbled, as blood came to my lips.
“I liked you Tim; but I have to look out for myself because no one else will . Prison garb won’t suit me. Did you really think that sweet innocent girl was me? I’m a better actress than I thought. I’ll put y your misery. A slash across your throat should work,” she said.
As she raised the knife I pulled my side arm and managed to shoot her in the heart. She died instantly. Rescued I recovered, but my heart still lives with the knowledge I took her life. Sometimes, when I look out of the corner of my eye I see her smiling as she once did, and my nightmare begins again.
250 words
@SweetSheil
Maybe I was falling for her. Maybe, I was just insecure. I knew she was comfortable, that she was flourishing. I was a newbie with no advantages; she was a mother duck with a couple of decades left to kill.
“You’re going to have to keep your head down,” she said, addressing the cell’s ceiling. “But not look afraid. It’s a balancing act – if you’re too confident you’ll get stomped on; if you appear weak, you’ll get maimed.” She rolled to the edge of her bunk and peered down at me, her dreads framing her face like the sun’s rays.
It was my seventh day on the Wainfleet wing: the second since I’d been taken into her care.
“Of course,” she continued, knowing I’d not interrupt. “A girl like you, number forty-two; you’re guaranteed to draw attention. You’re just lucky I made my claim on you first.”
I was one of the hundreds here who’d little to distinguish us. Most of us were just numbers, forfeiting our names, only a select few worthy enough to retain our identities. And Marsha was a trustee who’d been assigned to the kitchen. She had the knife skills of a butcher and was feared by most of us here.
I’d not want to find myself on the wrong end of her filleting knife.
But her attention had its benefits. I could use the shower twice a day and not feel afraid. Marsha was both possessive and protective about the ones that she chose.
250 words – twothirdzrasta.blogspot.com
Corey studied Dalton and despites Duke’s warning, she continued. “Why do you persist in this?”
“In what?”
“In everything you are doing right now.”
He flashed his winsome grin and shrugged. “What does that even mean?”
“Persist, Dalton. It’s in the dictionary. It means to stay the course.”
“Hold the fort,” Brady suggested.
Tank looked up. “Die hard.”
Corey made a face. “Die hard? Seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously. Like John McClain in ‘Die Hard.’ Now that was a persistent sonavabitch.”
All the men nodded and made sounds of agreement. Corey considered performing a head slap. “You’re doing it again, Dalton.”
“Doing what?”
“This!” She let her frustration leak into her voice. “Every time. You’re deflecting.”
Duke took her hand. “Princess, has it occurred to you that he might not want to talk about it?”
“Yeah,” Dom agreed. “ We’re manly men. We don’t talk about feelings.”
Meg jabbed Kin in the side with her elbow before he could agree. “Lass, we don’t,” he grumbled.
“I call BS. Right, Corey?”
“Look, just because you two are happily married, that doesn’t mean the rest of us
need to go all girly.” Dom didn’t know when to quit.
Both women stared at Dalton. He looked away first, much to his consternation.
“It’s no big deal,” he said quietly. “She left. End of story.”
Corey and Meg exchanged a long look and the men who understood their expressions physically braced.
“You really liked her.”
“Yeah, okay. Maybe I was falling for her.” And he had. Hard.
****
250 Hard Target future words (Maybe as a teaser in the epilogue of CROSSFIRE?)
@SilverJames_
If I were asked about my relationship with Mary, the response was always “platonic.” She’d say the same. Always had been. Always would be.
Grew up together. Hung out with each other during breaks in our college years. BFFs in the truest sense.
So when she asked me whether she should go to Stanford for grad school, I told her I was thrilled for her. That it’d be a great opportunity to get away from the east coast for a few years. Maybe even stay there for a bit longer.
When she asked me to drive her to the airport, of course I said I would. Most of her stuff was shipped earlier, and as we drove, she admitted she’d miss seeing the trees change.
She was through security faster than I wanted her to be so we said our goodbyes sooner than I hoped. But we said them and she turned and gave me a wave as she started towards her gate.
I thought of waiting till she was airborne at least. Who knows with flights these days? But I couldn’t. Heading home in my car I suddenly realized that maybe I was falling for her. And by then it was too late to do anything about it.
Joseph P. Garland, @JPGarlandAuthor. 209 Words
“Sis! Get over here, quick!”
Karakun’s voice rose urgently over the cliff to the swirling depths of purgatory. With an exasperated sigh, Akaihane redoubled her attention on her book. She did not move from the soft light of the mana tree.
Some minutes later, her twin came huffing and panting from hauling himself back onto the island.
“Why didn’t you come?! Maybe I was falling!”
For her part, Akaihane was all too familiar with the difference between her brother’s excited scream and his trouble scream. How twins could have such divergent interests was beyond her.
“And what could I have done if you were?”
“Uh, throw me a rope?”
Akaihane sensed peaceful relief, washing away recent terror that couldn’t be coming from her daredevil twin. She closed her book on her thumb and looked up to see a strange, adorable red lizard draped around Karakun’s neck.
“What is that?”
The wide-eyed cat-sized quadruped had a pair of wings tucked tight against its back. Its foreclaws clutched its barbed tail for dear life.
“What I wanted you to see! This little guy must’ve lost his way in last night’s storm. I don’t think he could’ve held on much longer.”
Whatever the creature was, if it came from the lands above, it was stuck here now. Just like everybody else. The air around Kurogame resisted even arcane attempts to ascend.
Akaihane stood and dusted off her seat.
“I think I’ve seen creatures like that in one of old Chimon’s books.”
248 Cat’s The Pajamas words
@DavidALudwig
#ThursThreads is now CLOSED. Thanks to everyone who wrote this week and I hope to catch you next week.